Shine the Light, Fill the Well: Rising Up & Burning Out

Jeneé Osterheldt covers identity and social justice through the lens of culture and the arts. She centers Black lives and the lives of people of color. Sometimes this means writing about Beyoncé and Black womanhood or unpacking the importance of public art and representation. Sometimes this means taking systemic racism, sexism, and oppression to task. It always means Black lives matter. She joined the Globe in 2018. A native of Alexandria, Virginia and a graduate of Norfolk State University, Osterheldt was a 2017 Nieman Fellow at Harvard, where her studies focused on the intersection of art and justice. She previously worked as a Kansas City Star culture columnist.

Natanja Craig Oquendo is the CEO of Boston Women’s Fund, where she is redesigning philanthropy to follow community leadership — not override it. Guided by the principle “do nothing about us without us,” she has spent more than 20 years shifting power toward the communities most impacted by inequity. Since joining the Fund in 2020, she has tripled grantmaking, expanded partnerships from six organizations to 22, grown the operating budget from $300,000 to $2.2 million, and increased the endowment from $2.1 million to $3.5 million. She advanced multi-year grants of up to five years, pioneered a “Request for Conversation” model to replace traditional RFPs with trust-based engagement, and launched the Seed Funding Grant to expand access to capital for Black leaders and grassroots innovators. She is equally proud of building an organizational culture that supports the full human — where caregiving is not penalized, boundaries are respected, lived experience informs decision-making, and sustainability replaces burnout as the measure of commitment. In 2025, she co-led Carrying the Weight, Leading the Change, a research report developed with UMass Boston, and founded Horizon Collective, a leadership initiative for women and gender-expansive leaders of color. 

Dr. Uché Blackstock is an emergency physician, New York Times bestselling author, and founder and CEO of Advancing Health Equity, a consulting firm that partners with healthcare and public health organizations to build more equitable systems of care. A nationally recognized voice on health equity, women’s health, leadership, and the future of healthcare, she is the author of Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine. Her work has been featured by MSNBC, NPR, The Washington Post, and Scientific American, and she has been named to TIME100 Health and other national lists recognizing leaders shaping the future of health. Dr. Blackstock graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Medical School.